Saturday, December 09, 2006

It annoys the hell out of me to see some big names promoting themselves shamelessly [not those on my blogroll], getting major traffic and they’re truly neither quality nor well laid out. Of course, they say people visit for the expertise, to read the pearls of wisdom but this seems a very MSM thing to say. Why are they emulating the MSM? Is that what they’re trying to get into?

Then you get some fine blogs where the guys [and gals] think out what they say, they’re also clearly knowledgeable in their field, they present well and more importantly, they invite debate rather than say: “Hey look, I’m the expert – here’s your daily dose.” What happens to them? Either they get invited onto Doughty and they’re never the same again or they’re invited onto Doughty and they stay the same unaffected scribes they always were or else they gradually die away.

I call for us to set up some sort of cooperative for the smaller blogs, some sort of struggling blogger solidarity group and we can draft a few rules. We need to:

1] adopt the motto: ‘do unto other blogs as you would have them do unto you’;2] be broadminded and accept that others in the scheme are going to have views opposed to ours. So what?;3] include at least ten posts in a week, no matter how small;4] actively try to get round to each blogger on our own roll at least once in two days and comment at least three times in the week;5] promote our blogfriends with either banners, buttons or the occasional link;6] join in their little promo things e.g. normpoll, tomlist, voluntary-code-free-zone, chicken yoghurt’s book and so on;7] comment on other’s comments on your own blog whenever you can;8] link – if it’s in your power to blogroll someone who’s blogrolled you, try to do it. If you can link to a member in a post, do it.

If we, the little people, all do this, with even 100 participants, we guarantee ourselves at least basic traffic, we can share ideas and improve our blogs. To this end, I’ve prepared an initial 150x95 banner above, which needs to be cut, pasted then uploaded on your sidebar. It links to an administrative blog where we’ll keep the data, manifesto and ideas sharing. If we want to change the location or go to wordpress or whatever, we just change the banner embedding.

On this blog, we can throw around ideas on how to run this thing better. For now, a start would be just to upload the banner to our sites.

There are some very hefty people on this list now. We have to get this site opened up and soon [see post above]. All advice how to do that appreciated. Do I just go into "Members" and copy down the e-mails? What if a blogger on the list doesn't have an e-mail? Help!

What was Blogpower?

Blogpower ...is so simple that Tim Worstall can't understand it. It was just a club of bloggers, at the time when having a blog was considered a good use of our time. At the time, there was a commitment to visit and promote each other's blogs.

"In fairness to Tim, I didn't get it either at first. I signed up because James asked me. But I have been pleasantly surprised at the sense of community that has developed in a very short time. I hope we can retain the essential simplicity of the idea and continue to help each other out." [Tom Paine]

What seemed important at the time has now changed. Many of us have evolved into Twitter and Facebook and other forms of social media. That said, it was fun.

This site is just an archive to reflect the grand idea that it was. Small bloggers supporting other small bloggers.

Check details and RSS on all our members

If you'd like to know the nitty gritty about each of us, click on this banner above and it gives you a great overview, due to the hard work of Tom Paine, who constructed and maintains the site using Page Flakes. Thanks too to The Thunderdragon for the banner.

And for those who have a lot of free time, Matt Murrell has constructed a Google Reader Feed of all the Blogpower Blogs. You can get that here.

To post on this blog

Please contact Colin Campbell and they'll send you an invitation. Any Blogpower member can create blogposts here but it does require activation.

Next Blogpower Roundup

Who knows who will be hosting the next Blogpower Roundup for the weekend of Whenever. Please send applications to host to Colin Campbell with the date of your choice. Thanks.

Christmas Radio 5 Live

Get the MP3 of the Tin Drummer's Radio 5 Live interview with Chris Vallance as he speaks about Blogpower and the Blogosphere. Click on the photo.